


Worth the Wait

by LadyVader



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Future Fic, Grammarly is my copilot, M/M, Not Beta Read, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Endgame, and with a great many assumptions about the TVA, set centuries after EG and the Loki series, warning for mentions of MCU characters dying of old age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25291609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyVader/pseuds/LadyVader
Summary: Thor receives an unexpected call from Earth's latest Sorceror Supreme and an even more unexpected (and overdue) gift.Written for thorkiweek4 on twitter for the prompt: Old Men Thorki
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 98





	Worth the Wait

**Worth the Wait:**

Thor sat back, sighing as his bones creaked in time with the old, polished wood.

He couldn’t guarantee that he would stay here even as long as a century, but after millennia darting about the cosmos and finally creating a new world worthy of the name of Asgard, he felt it high time he hung up Stormbreaker and let his old bones rest awhile.

He hadn’t liked to stay still for too long, it hurt entirely too much to keep outliving his friends. He’d set himself the task of saving the Midgardians from themselves -- seeing the descendants of his old friends onto a new world rich in life and with a fresh, young sun that wouldn’t go dim for several million years at least -- before gently stepping away from their achingly fragile race.

He kept in contact, of course. Earth had come a long way in his lifetime, and there were even humans with powers not dissimilar to his own to help keep the planet on its happy path, forming federations and alliances with galactic races that his old friends would have goggled at the very notion of, let alone setting up trade agreements.

He understood now, why his father had baulked over Thor wishing to not marry an Asgardian, it hurt to watch the now countless generations of his friend’s descendants grow and never know the heroes they came from, with only Thor to mourn and tell their stories. It would have broken him entirely to watch it happen to his own children, demigods or no.

Strange had lasted the longest, for all Thor had never quite managed to call him ‘friend’. Banner had made it for hundreds of years past even some of the other super-powered mortals, and Thor had even started to wonder if he wouldn’t age at all, but he had passed quietly in his sleep one night. Strange had theorised that it had been the blend of the two that had given Banner the ability to finally age, his heart simply giving out where the Hulk’s could likely have gone on for millennia yet. Thor had been torn between regret and relief, not caring for the thought of his friend alone at the end of all time only slightly more than he liked the loss of him.

It had been a long, hard, but rewarding run getting Asgardia established. He’d used his gifts to drag life from seemingly dead rock until he had helped to shape a realm not dissimilar from the one he had been raised on and it gave him pleasure beyond the telling of it to have birthed such a world. For all he may never have married or had children, he would always be the Father of Asgardia and her last true King, formally ceding full control to Brunnhilde and the other elected council members, leaving them to govern their new world as he sat back, content merely to have shaped it.

That wasn’t to say that he wasn’t lonely, however.

He’d lost so many over his three and a half thousand years of life, and when he looked in the mirror in the mornings and saw silver hair, he could barely recall the headstrong youth who’d once stared back at him with two blue eyes and a head of golden hair.

That boy had had everything, and Thor wished -- for all he was rightly proud of his deeds -- that he could go back and be that boy again, his life stretching out before him, his friends and family at his side, his heart whole and full of love he’d never thought to question.

Thor sighed, a familiar ache setting up behind his breastbone, a phantom pain as his soul yearned for a presence he hadn’t felt in two thousand years, feeling the loss as keenly as if it had been only yesterday.

He’d mourned his parents, he’d mourned his friends, but somehow the crack through his heart where Loki had died (and died again) never quite closed, and he sometimes felt -- fanciful thought it was -- that it was as though the wound was still bleeding somehow, never allowed to heal, never closing, holding the way open for all his love and grief to come surging through as though Loki was freshly lost to him every minute of every day.

Strange had told him once that, due to their interfering, the Avengers had lost Loki, between timelines. His presence hadn’t been enough to fragment their reality into an alternate one, and so Thor had hoped for  _ years _ that he would somehow cross paths with his beloved brother, but during the small window of time Strange had had with the time stone, before its return to its keeper, he had never found a trace of Loki.

A familiar crackling sound came, and Thor watched, stunned, as a glimmering portal formed before him as though summoned by Thor’s remembrance his former friend.

“Drumm,” Thor greeted Earth’s latest Sorcerer Supreme with a croak, pretending that he hadn’t somehow been hoping for a glimpse of his former life, no matter how unlikely. “What can I do for you?”

“The sentence has been served,” Drumm intoned with a slow inclination of his head, something sparkling in his dark eyes and Thor felt power gathering in his veins in readiness. He’d always been on good terms with Earth’s wizards, but they weren’t precisely friends, and he had no idea to what the openly mysterious man was referring.

“What sentence? Whose?” Thor bit out, still unaccustomed to the sensation of unease he felt in the presence of one whose fine control of seidr outmatched his own.

“My apologies, Thor -- I have a message from my Predecessor as well as the Time Variance Authority, and I must impart it in full before we can proceed.”

Thor’s heart thrust itself against his ribs, beating frantically as an old hope re-ignited deep in his belly.

_ The Time Variance Authority. _

Thor had only heard that name once before when Strange had tried to explain to him that he had asked for signs of Loki, and the TVA had said there was no sign of his fracturing the timelines.

“Please,” he rasped.  _ Give me back my brother.  _ “Go on.”

“The sentence has been served. The Temporal Offender -- one Loki Odinson -- has served his time with great diligence and has been of great assistance to the Temporal Incursion team; thus his sentence has been commuted and is therefore complete.”

Thor didn’t know when he’d stood, but he could feel his feet trembling in his boots, his blood frothing in his veins as his most fervent hope was abruptly realised.

“H- _ HOW _ ?” Thor panted, chest heaving as though he’d been battling for days and Drumm grimaced slightly.

“I am  _ sorry, _ Thor. The task was left to me, and for all I understood it, the secrecy has not sat well with me, I too have a brother.”

_ Loki. Loki. Loki. Loki. Loki. Loki. Loki. Loki. _

Thor’s heart beat out Loki’s name in a frantic cry, unable to believe what he was hearing.

_ Give me back my brother. _

“Strange was forbidden to mention him to you because you had to follow your path uninterrupted and there was… some concern that you might not be content to leave him in their charge.”

Thor couldn’t help but smile, swift and savage. They had been right not to tell him, temporal cataclysm or no, had Thor known the TVA were holding Loki he would have most certainly torn a hole in any and all timeline between them to get to him.

“Give me back my brother,” he said, low and dangerous, the weight of the storm resting heavily on his words and Drumm laughed softly, holding his hands up in capitulation submission.

“Thor Odinson, it is the request of the Time Variance Authority that you accept your brother into your care and help him acclimate to his new surroundings.” Drumm cleared his throat, and added “Also, this isn’t part of the release ritual but… they  _ will _ be watching so, uh, try and keep him on the straight and narrow, hm?”

Shaking, Thor nodded. “I accept him, and I will keep an eye on him or anything that is required, only  _ release him _ to me, and I will do anything you ask!”

Drumm smiled, and some currently crushed down part of Thor resented that the wizard was witnessing him both shattering and reforming with joy all at once. “It is done.”

Another portal formed within Drumm’s and with a casual flick of his wrist, it flew through into Thor’s quarters, before fizzling out, leaving Thor flickering in the firelight as a figure stepped through the shadows, wobbling unsteadily as their feet came to rest on Thor’s hardwood floor.

“Hello brother.”

Thor couldn’t breathe.

Thor’s hair had turned steel grey only a few centuries before, but Loki’s hair was snow-white, his eyes all the more piercing for it, green and wide as he watched Thor warily, only just out of arms reach.

“ _ Loki _ ,” Thor whispered, feeling tears streak down into his beard, and Loki seemed to relax somewhat at the sight of Thor’s obvious emotion. “ _ Brother _ …”

Loki made a choked sound and Thor was across the space between them before he could finish swallowing the sob rising in his chest, snatching Loki tightly to him with one hand, the other cradling Loki’s jaw as he pressed their foreheads together.

“Loki,  _ Loki _ , gods how I have missed you!”

“I have  _ watched _ you,” Loki leaned heavily into Thor’s palm, his wet eyes flickering shut too late to catch a single tear, “for  _ so long,  _ brother. I watched you mourn me --  _ twice _ \-- watched you build our world anew, watched become the man you were always destined to be and all  _ without _ me and I have  _ hated every moment _ , Thor.”

Loki’s long clever fingers were in Thor’s hair then, pulling tight, his eyes open and  _ fierce. _

“The TVA  _ love _ me, Thor. I could have worked for them forever, it requires understanding and deviousness, and I could have ended by running the entirety of it within a year of being freed, but I  _ begged them _ to send me to you because I can’t be without you, I can’t watch _ you _ be without  _ me. _ ”

“Brother,” Thor grated again, and Loki tightened his fingers in Thor’s hair.

“ _ Yes _ , Thor… and  _ No _ .”

Thor blinked, out of practice with Loki’s quick tongue and tricks.

“I am  _ always  _ and  _ never was _ your brother, Thor.”

Frowning, Thor didn’t understand and would have said so, but Loki was kissing him with the kind of desperation that only several millennia of longing could produce, Thor recognising it in the same moment his own lifelong hunger ripped lunged up from his gut.

“I’ll  _ always _ be your brother,” Loki hissed almost angrily, seemingly resentful of his own hands as he found he needed to free both of them to start tugging at Thor’s clothes, “but I’m ready to be so much  _ more _ .”

Thor caught Loki’s hands in his, abruptly aware of his softer body and bruised and lonely soul.

“Loki, I -- I’ve grown old without you, I may not be what you’ve--”

“--No!” Loki jerked back, gesturing at himself and Thor in turn. “You have  _ aged _ without me, just as I have…  _ somewhat _ … aged without you!”

He stopped to smooth a shoulder-length strand of pure white hair behind his ear with a sniff, and Thor’s eyes raked over him even as he bit back a smile, his brother clearly as sensitive to the meagre changes time had made to his elegant, whipcord form as Thor was about his own powerful but distinctly more malleable body.

“That  _ said _ ,” Loki continued, draping himself sinuously over Thor in a way that summoned a thousand flashbacks and made him feel twice as big an idiot for not truly understanding his feelings for Loki before this moment. “I have every intention of growing old  _ with _ you, so you need to get any other plans you have out of your head because you’ve been in charge of you for the past thousand years or so and it is decidedly  _ my turn _ .”

“Yes Loki,” Thor whispered and let his brother steer him back into his kiss, heat sizzling through his old bones as the universe suddenly lay out before him, ripe and full of possibilities with Loki at his side.

But first, Thor decided, hauling Loki closer with his hands set firmly on his ass, he might try having Loki  _ under _ him awhile.

**Fin.**


End file.
